WILLIAM PITT. After the Design of Jackson. Engraved by H. Meyer. HE admirable design by Jackson here reproduced, appeared in London in 1810. Its original, the portrait by Hoppner, was at that time owned by Lord Mulgrave. It is one of the most satisfying of the existing portraits of the great English orators. Pitt must have looked so at the time he gave his unfulfilled promise of becoming greater than his father. WILLIAM PITT (1759-1806) ORD BROUGHAM writes that as an orator William Pitt is to be placed in the very highest class. "With a spare use of ornament," he says, "hardly indulging more in figures or even in figurative expression than the most severe examples of ancient chasteness allowed; with little variety of style and hardly any of the graces of manner, he no sooner rose than he kept the attention fixed and unflagging till it pleased him to let it go." This effect Brougham attributes "to his unbroken flow which never for a moment left the hearer in pain or doubt, and yet was not the mere fluency of mere relaxation, requiring no effort of the speaker. His declamation was admirable, mingling with and clothing the argument, and no more separable from the reasoning than the heat is from the metal in a stream of lava. Yet with all this excellence the last effect of the highest eloquence was for the most part wanting. We seldom forgot the speaker or lost the artist in his work." In this closing sentence Brougham shows why with all his great talents the younger Pitt falls below the elder as a man and a statesman. The father was great by reason of the force of his conviction of right, his devotion to the principles of law and liberty, his belief in England as the leader of the world, and in the right of every individual Englishman to be as free and happy as he was individually fit to be under free and equal laws. The son was great as an artist, who believed in men as the materials for statesmanship, to be moved this way and that by their intellectual superiors, with no more regard to their wishes than it was necessary to show as a means of moving them. In his speech of June 7th, 1799, proposing a military subsidy to Russia against France, he defines himself in saying: "Whatever I may in the abstract think of the kind of government called a Republic,― whatever may be its fitness to the nation where it now prevails, there may be times when it would not be dangerous to exist in its vicinity; but while the spirit of France remains what at present it is, its government vindictive, despotic, unjust, with a temper untamed, a character unchanged,- if its power to do wrong at all remains, there does not exist any security for this country or Europe.» The meaning of this guarded utterance was sufficiently explained by - VIII-201 the attempt to restore the Bourbons, and in the gradual desertion by the Whigs, whom Pitt led, of what had been Whig principles in his father's lifetime. He defined in this speech the attitude of England in a way that helped to determine American policies against an aggressive Republican propaganda. Pitt was born near Hayes in Kent, May 28th, 1759. After a University record which gave promise. of his future greatness, he entered Parliament in 1780. In July 1782 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in 1783 Prime Minister. The English Whigs had been at first disposed to sympathize with French Republicanism, but in his administration of the domestic affairs of England Pitt repeatedly brought about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and used all the force of the government to check the growth of republicanism of any kind. His second administration began in 1804, and he attempted to overthrow Napoleon by the combined forces of England, Russia, and Austria. When the attempt was defeated by Napoleon's brilliant victories of 1805 Pitt, broken in health and hope, retired from public life and died at Putney, January 23d, 1806. AGAINST FRENCH REPUBLICANISM (Delivered in the House of Commons, Sitting as "A Committee of Supply," June 7th, 1799, in Support of a Motion to Grant the Russian Army a Subsidy against France «for the Deliverance of Europe ») I WISH, sir, to offer such an explanation on some of the topics dwelt upon by the honorable gentleman who just sat down [Mr. Tierney] as will, I think, satisfy the committee and the honorable gentleman. The nature of the engagement to which the message would pledge the House is simply, that, first, for the purpose of setting the Russian army in motion, we shall advance to that country £225,000-part of it by installments, to accompany the subsidy to be paid when the army is in actual service. And I believe no one who has been the least attentive to the progress of affairs in the world, who can appreciate worth and admire superior zeal and activity, will doubt the sincerity of the sovereign of Russia, or make a question of his integrity in any compact. The second head of distribution is £75,000 per month, to be paid at the expiration of every succeeding month of service; and lastly, a subsidy of £37,500 to be paid after the war, on the conclusion of a peace by common consent. Now I think it strange that the honorable gentleman should charge us with |